1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for producing colored shaped article from curable resin, colored shaped article produced from curable resin, and shaping apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Coloration of shaped article produced by a photo-model creation method, that is, by lamination and shaping using laser beam irradiation of a photo-curable resin is greatly limited by the color (usually, a semitransparent color) inherent to the resin itself. For this reason, a method has been used by which a colorant was added to the produced shaped article upon completion of a series of lamination and shaping operations.
However, with the above-mentioned conventional coloration method, large-scale equipment is required to add a colorant to the shaped article. Another problem is that when the object of coloration is a shaped article having a complex shape, or when a shaped article having a complex shape is the object of coloration, as mentioned above, and multicolor addition is conducted which uses a plurality of colorants, the addition operation itself is difficult to implement with the conventional equipment and there are portions that cannot be colored because of complex shape of the shaped article.
Accordingly, with the foregoing in view, a method has been attempted by which a colorant is added on the upper surface of the layers each time the layer is formed by the above-mentioned photo-model creation method, that is, a method for curing a photo-curable resin by laser beam irradiation. In the shaped article having a colorant added thereto by this method, as shown in FIG. 1, the thickness h′ of coating layers 31˜3n formed from a colorant is much less than the thickness h of layers 11˜1n formed from the photo-curable resin, but when the shaped article is viewed from the upper surface, the color of the colorant appears as a color of the shaped article.
However, when the shaped article is viewed from the side surface, since the thickness h′ of the coating layers 31˜3n is very small, as mentioned above, the color (usually, a semitransparent color) inherent to the resin itself, rather than the color of the colorant, appears as the color of the shaped article. The resulting problem is that the reliable coloration effect cannot be obtained and, therefore, the above-described colorant addition method cannot be considered effective.